Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen it is special privilege to be in Poland some few days after the thirtieth anniversary of the publication the Magna Carta for today’s families. I am of course speaking of Familiaris Consortio and the Charter of the Rights of the Family given to us by Blessed Pope John Paul, the Great.

I wish to contrast two paradigms or blueprints for families worldwide — the Civilization of Love based on God and the current paradigm of aggressive Western atheistic élites — the Culture of Death.

For 40 years I have been a family doctor with a particular interest in the rights of the family in England which has for so many years been the geo-political epicentre of the Culture of Death.

This culture is meeting with increasing opposition in England and is itself dying. We must replace it with the Civilisation of Love, centred on the family. All of my experience in almost forty years in the parents’ rights movement indicates that the first step in the creation of this new civilisation is the restoration of Parents as the Primary Educators and Protectors of their children.

Alexandra Kollontai, (1872—1952) the first Soviet People’s Commissar for Social Welfare wrote in 1920:

“Communist society will take upon itself all the duties involved in the education of the child” (My emphasis) Kommunistka (1920) “Communism and the Family”

In 1922 Lenin called a meeting of Marxist intellectuals to study why the Bolshevik revolution had not spread to the West. According to the major conservative thinker Ralph de Toledano:

“this meeting was perhaps more harmful to Western civilization than the Bolshevik Revolution itself’”.

Judeo-Christian belief was to be erased by the use of sexual instinct. (Georg Lukacs developed the idea of ’Revolution and Eros’—sexual instinct used as an instrument of destruction)

Intellectuals were to be organised to use the most negative destructive criticism possible of every sphere of life in order to make Western civilisation stink (Willi Munzenberg).

The family and its rights over education were to be eradicated including in the area of sexual and homosexual indoctrination in schools.

The traditional relationships between men and women, the specific roles of fathers and mothers -especially the authority of the fathers -were to be destroyed.

These intellectuals moved to Frankfurt becoming known as the Frankfurt School and then to the United States where they used American commercial, academic and media resources to spread their silent world revolution. http://www.cfnews.org.uk/PEP.htm

This silent revolution in the West has never stopped. For example Saul Alinsky who died in 1972 was an American transitional Marxist. He supported the Frankfurt School’s “long march through the institutions”, churches, trade unions and existing political parties. He dedicated his creed in Rules for Radicals to Lucifer, whom he called the “first radical”. His two best known disciples are Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton.

Surprisingly in 2010 our U.K. Prime Minister, David Cameron claimed Alinsky as the inspiration for his Government’s present agenda for Britain. This agenda was promoted in a local parish a few weeks ago.

The General Recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women instruct state parties to ensure the right both to sexual education, to contraception and abortion for girls and adolescents without parental knowledge or consent. Articles 8,12,14,18, 21.http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/recommendations/index.html

United Nations documents acquire legal force in states which have ratified them. It is particularly difficult for parents to oppose the imposition of such laws in nations which have already ceded much of their sovereignty to supranational bodies such as the European Union.

Parental resistance:

Germany 2006: In Konrad v.Germany the European Court of Human Rights ruled that German Christians did not have the right to home school because it believed that it would set up “parallel societies”. (My emphasis).

Germany 2009: Ten Christian parents who refused to allow their 10 year old children to attend compulsory sex classes have now completed a second prison term (43 days) during which the State exercised even greater control over their children. This case has now been referred to the United Nations Human Rights Court in Geneva where it will be heard in the beginning of next year.

Spain The new government in Spain has given a committment to removing the compulsary classes which promote blasphemy against Our Lord, homosexual behaviour and Communism. 305 parents had asked the European Court of Human Rights for the right to withdraw their children from these classes.

However the corpus of law protecting your rights as parents is overwhelming, particularly The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1949, which starts:

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, ...

and later continues:

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. Article 16 (3) (My emphasis)

Because Hitler had used the educational system to indoctrinate children the drafting committee added: (Professor Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New)

Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. Article 16 (3) (My emphasis)

Only eleven days ago the Holy See’s delegate strongly emphasised to the United Nations the indispensible prior role of parents in all aspects of their children’s development and education including in the important area of human sexuality. Before the Third Committee on Item 65(a): Rights of the Child New York, 22 November 2011 http://www.holyseemission.org/statements/statement.aspx?id=340

Without parental priority, what stands between children and the coercive power of the State.....? Statement of the Holy See 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly Before the Third Committee on Item 65(a): The Girl Child New York, 22 November 2011 http://www.holyseemission.org/statements/statement.aspx?id=341

This prior right to educate ones children with the support of society and the state is a fundamental human right which should be enshrined in every national constitution in the world.

I want to explain to you how parental rights have been removed in England.

English clerical liberalism has been an essential ally of the birth control lobby. The crucial year was 1930 when, for the first time in Christian history, the Church of England morally sanctioned contraceptives in marriage. This gave the Anglo-Saxon world, the dominant world culture, the moral justification for contraception.

Contraception has been the locomotive of the sexual revolution. The current head of the Anglican Church teaches that since non pro-creative sex is acceptable in contraception it must logically follow that homosexual acts are justifiable.

Contraceptive provision and indoctrination in schools, essential elements of the sexual revolution, have been the locomotive of the removal of parents’ rights. This indoctrination now includes the promotion of homosexuality to children an essential element of the world homosexual revolution.

In 1974 in the U.K parental rights were removed on contraception by the Government upon advice given by the Family Planning Association, a member of IPPF.

In 1984 a Catholic mother of 10 children, Mrs. Victoria Gillick took the Department of Health to court to stop the prescription of contraceptives to under age children without parental permission. In the first court she lost but in the Court of Appeal she won. This victory resulted in doctors being forbidden to give contraceptives to minors without parental permission for the 10 months in which this legal prohibition survived. In this period, for under age girls, the contraceptive uptake fell. Abortion and birth statistics did not rise. They also fell. The case was then referred to the House of Lords which found in favour of contraceptive provision without parental knowledge.

As a result, in 1985, parental rights to consent to general medical treatment were greatly diminished.

In 1994 the Courts removed parental rights to know about their under age child having an abortion in spite of the evidence that all high quality clinical studies show that parental notification in the case of abortion requests reduces underage abortion by 10-20% .

Now schools, including many Christian schools welcome government agencies which are known to Church authorities to be publically committed to giving schoolchildren access to abortion and contraceptives without parental knowledge. Catholic parents are publically resisting this policy of hierarchical collaboration with the State.

In the United Kingdom a legal infrastructure has been laid down for a massive attack on Christian values and therefore on our families. The Sexual Orientation Regulations (2007) seek to privatize and penalize the authentic Christian teaching on human sexuality, marriage and the family. The penalties are draconian. Using these Regulations the civil rights of millions of Christians have been remorselessly overridden by a tiny homosexualist lobby.

This Homosexual Law Reform has grave implications for the rights of Parents as Primary Educators of their Children. It covers the equal employment rights of male and female homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals etc and is to be enforced with the threat of severe legal sanctions.

This May the last Catholic adoption agency was legally suppressed because it refused to sanction homosexual adoptions.

Sadly in their document Diversity and Equality Guidelines 2005 the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales state that they welcome, will implement and will monitor this Government sexual orientation policy within the Church including in schools.

Following the successful model of exporting abortion law reform via the Common Law Jurisdiction the British government is now promoting homosexual law reform via the countries of the Commonwealth, the European Union and other international bodies. Currently the web site of the British Foreign Office provides a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual toolkit to promote these legal changes world-wide.http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/global-issues/human-rights/equality/lgbt-rights/GBT rights toolkit [PDF]

Such changes would bring a real risk to parents in other countries who try to protect their children from homosexual indoctrination. They could themselves be charged with indoctrinating the “hate crime” of homophobia. There would then be risk of their children being put into care and they would have no legal recourse if the carers appointed were homosexuals.

What have been the fruits of this radical secular paradigm for the family been in England?

In our Prime Minister’s own words we have a broken society.

The subjective well being of our young people is the worst in the OECD

There is now widespread concern about the premature sexualisation of children to the extent that pressure from parents has caused major fashion houses to agree that “fabrics and cuts should provide for modesty” and has even caused the prime Minister to threaten the media with legislation if they continue to damage childhood and the family.

40% of children aged 15 or younger admit having sexual intercourse the highest of any of the 24 European countries surveyed by the WHO. The figure for boys was the second highest in the survey.

marriages down by 50%

the mean number of sexual partners for adults 9 (Mori Survey of Sexual Attitudes Jan 2006)

45% of children illegitimate

Higher levels of family break-down in the United Kingdom than other country in Europe.

Abortion—208,050 per year—legal up to birth. one every 3 minutes 7 million since 1967

Since the birth of Louise Brown, the first IVF child, again in England, in excess of 2,000,000 embryos have been discarded, frozen, selectively aborted or used in destructive experiments in England and Wales.

Britain is the first country in the world to legalise the creation of and experimentation on human/animal hybrids.

400,000 human beings are destroyed by abortion and in the course of IVF each year. This equals the total populations of the cities of Cambridge, Oxford and York.

There is widespread fear of euthanasia. One priest in England has denounced hospital staff who referred to patients who resisted euthanasia as “coffin dodgers”.

So our atheistic Culture of Death is dying. We Christians of the West and the East, both of the lungs of Europe, must now replace it with God’s Civilization, the Civilization of Life based on love within the family.

The Holy Church of God can not accomplish its mission in society except through the family and its mission. Ladies and gentlemen, we have to go to the entire world to tell everyone that social, cultural, economic and political life must be “for” the family, and no longer “at the cost of” the family.

The first step towards this new civilization is to restore to parents their right to educate and protect their children in conformity with their moral and religious convictions. Parents are the primary educators of their children.

All previous generations have understood this obvious truth. Aristotle 360 years before Christ taught that moral education must take place, primarily in the intimate community of the family, where moral sensibility can be properly developed within a particular framework. Nothing should be allowed to undercut this primacy. (Politics 1262b17-22) (1262b22-23).

This right is God given in the Commandment.

“Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12).

It is affirmed by Our Lord in His teaching and in his His life.

“..He went down with them to Nazareth, and lived there in subjection to them, And his mother kept all these words in her heart. And so Jesus advanced in wisdom with the years.” Luke 2.51-52

As Blessed Pope John Paul teaches in Familiaris Consortio:

This right is “primary in regard to the educational role of others, on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children;.... It is parental love that must inspires and enrich education with the values of kindness, constancy, goodness, service, disinterestedness.” Familiaris Consortio N.36

It is “fundamental because it is rooted upon parental transmission of life to and love for their child.” Familiaris Consortio N36

The Russian Orthodox Church in common with the other Orthodox Churches takes the same position.

“Children become fruits of their love and communion, and their birth and upbringing belong, according to the Orthodox teaching, to one of the most important goals of marriage.”http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/3/14.aspx

Pope John Paul teaches that:

Iit is irreplaceable and inalienable, and therefore incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others. Familiaris Consortio N.36

As a family doctor and a Catholic father of seven children and nine grand children may l share with you some key thoughts on family life:

I will start with some specific points on the education of your children in the true meaning of human sexuality because of the close links between a person’s sexual morality and his general ethical values.

Your exampleof self giving love as good Christian parents provides the rôle model for the next generation. Children will naturally absorb sound attitudes on love, marriage and the true meaning of sexuality from good parents.

Your example and education in modesty and chastity will help them to build their own stable and united families.

Protect their delightful years of innocence from being disturbed by unnecessary information about sex and sensitively correct immoral misinformation from outside the home.

Each child has his or her own rate of maturation and should receive individual formation on the true meaning of sexuality and only the parent is in a position to know what, when and how.

In truth I believe that that this aspect of a child’s upbringing can only be carried out by the parents.

Resources such as As I have Loved You by Dr. Gerard O’Shea offer parents advice and materials for training their own children in a well integrated human sexuality according to the theology of Pope John Paul. As I have Loved You supports parents and affirms their competence.

At the appropriate time you must teach that the artificial separation of sexual love from life is wrong. That the separation of the unitive and procreative aspects of the conjugal act in contraception, in vitro-fertilisation and homosexual acts damages the deepest truth of sexual intercourse itself. This and the evil of abortion must be taught with clarity and sensitivity.

You must never renounce your duty to educate your children in conformity with your moral and religious convictions.

Schools including officially Catholic schools only complement parents as Primary Educators and must act only in their name and with their consent. Parents must politely and very firmly forbid and prevent any instruction on sexuality which may damage their child’s innocence irrespective of its source. Insist on seeing any material which may be used in classes. Remove your child from the class if you consider it is in any way damaging to his moral well being.

Do not be bullied by the propaganda from the birth control lobby that parents can not give what it calls sex “education”. The birth control lobby is quite right. No normal loving parent could subject his or her child to much of their material because to do so would amount to psychological and spiritual abuse of their own child.

Our experience in the National Association of Catholic Families in England and Australia has shown that associations of families are enormously useful.

Some general pointers:

Each child has more value then everything else one does in one’s life.

A new baby brings the promise of loving care to the other children perhaps for thirty years after the deaths of the parents.

Your homes are the fundamental schools of education in love where children learn to love by knowing that their parents love them.

Mothers who value their maternal vocation and their importance in the home greatly help to develop femininity and motherhood in their daughters. They set a clear, strong and attractive example of womanhood for their sons.

The dignified and masculine behaviour of a father is a model for their sons. It inspires respect, admiration and security in their daughters.

Children respond to a cheerful, optimistic family atmosphere inspired by the love of God and their friends. In the words of Mother Teresa “bring prayer back into your families.”

Only by our children intensifying their Christian lives and they will have the necessary huge courage to give witness to their Christian values.

In conclusion

You Christian families are already building this new civilization of love.